1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the management of information handling systems. More specifically, embodiments of the invention provide a system and method for automatically performing remediation operations on a plurality of information handling system resources.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
However, the growing number, complexity, and diversity of these systems poses significant challenges to today's information technology (IT) executive, not the least of which is monitoring their operation to assure they are operating properly. Another challenge is providing pro-active maintenance and responsive remediation of systems deemed out of acceptable tolerance limits. Today, remediation of system issues extends beyond computing hardware to include operating systems, software applications, network connectivity, and effective access to the information resources users require to be productive. In the past, a “one size fits all” approach was been taken in an attempt to minimize support issues. However, such approaches resulted in some users being allocated insufficient resources while resources allocated to other users were underutilized or not used at all.
Attempts to address this issue have often included having a relatively small number of standardized system, application, and connectivity configurations. More recent approaches have included virtualization, where physical resources are collectively managed as virtual machines, each assigned to specific users or applications. These efforts have been facilitated with the advent of technologies such as storage area networks (SANs), where large volumes of storage are networked together and accessed by a network connection. In parallel, advances in network technologies allow high-speed access to data, even from mobile devices.
More recently, the concept of flex computing has come into vogue. Flex computing allows a computing environment to be custom-tailored to the needs of individual users. As their needs change, the computing environment can be adjusted to adapt to changing requirements.
However, these new approaches also create new support and remediation challenges, not the least of which are addressing issues of accuracy, consistency, and speed of issue resolution. Currently, determining effective remediations is typically by trial and error, and their execution or application relies on manual processes, which are time-consuming, costly, and error-prone. Furthermore, existing monitoring and management systems rely on the manual entry of known remediations. They are not added automatically once their effectiveness has been validated. In view of the foregoing, there is a need for automatically determining an optimum remediation and then automatically applying the remediation to the affected information handling system resource with no, or limited, human intervention. In addition, there is a need to minimize the amount of manual authoring while simultaneously increasing the level of consistency and accuracy of remediations.